“Mr. Chairman, it is not a theory but a hell of a condition that confronts us,” he said, uncertainly.  “I think that we should use the letter so providentially er—­um—­provided to make friends with the mammon of righteousness.  Two heads are proverbially better than one, if one is an Expert.  It behooves us, for the sake of the near and dear kinsmen, the Mark brothers, that we should so bear ourselves toward our generous hosts as to make them feel that they have entertained a devil unawares.  Avenge now the innumerable wrongs of me and my likes.  Before deciding on our line of action, however, I should like to hear from a learned gentleman in our midst, whose brain is ever fertile in expedients.  I refer to the only one of us who has been through college—­in at the front door and out the back.  I call on the representative of the class of Naughty-naughty!”

He sat down amid vociferous cries of “Hear!  Hear!”

The Bookman arose gracefully.  “While I thank the gentleman who has preceded me for his encomiums,” he said, with deprecatory modesty, “yet I can lay no claim for scholastic honors, owing to an unfortunate difference of opinion with the Faculty in the scorching question of turning state’s evidence concerning the ebullition of class feeling, in which I was implicated by a black eye or so.  I fought the good fight, I kept the faith, but I did not finish my course.  But to return to our sheep.

“In every crisis, I have always found precedent for action in the words of the immortal Swan of Avon.  What does Will say?  He says: 

‘Put money in thy purse!’

“Follows naturally the advice of the melancholy Dane, bearing directly on the case in hand: 

                      ’Let it work. 
    ’For ’tis the sport to see the engineer
      Hoist with his own petard.’

“Again,

’Look on this picture, then on that! 
The counterfeit.’

“Where is that counterfeit, anyhow?” He took from his pocket a good silver dollar, compared it thoughtfully with the bad one on the table, and continued.

“What else?  Why, this: 

’Art thou not horribly afeared?...  Could the world pick thee three such enemies again as that fiend Douglas, that spirit Percy, and that devil Glendower?’

“Having thus pointed out the danger, he plainly indicates the remedy: 

’Where shall I find one that will steal well?  O! for a fine thief of the age of two-or-three and twenty!  I am heinously unprovided.’

“Gentlemen, in my opinion we need three things.  First, the services of a skillful and discreet silversmith.  Second, a pair of eye-glasses fitted with a powerful microscopic lens, able to distinguish good from evil.  Third, a confederate who can steal well, such as we can doubtless find in or about Broad Street.  By these simple and feasible means we shall be enabled to whip-saw our redoubtable opponents or, to use the local term, ’give ’em the double-cross.’”